The Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish has been knighted in the Queen’s birthday honours list.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

The “King” is to become a knight. The Liverpool and Celtic legend Kenny Dalglish has been awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s birthday honours in recognition of his services to football, charity and the victims of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

Dalglish’s absence from honours lists since being made a MBE in 1984 has been a source of bewilderment and consternation at Liverpool’s Anfield home, where his status is reflected in the “King Kenny” moniker. That has been rectified with the announcement that the 67-year-old will join a select band of knighted former footballers and managers, a list that includes England’s World Cup winning manager Alf Ramsey, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Robson and Dalglish’s one-time Manchester United adversary Alex Ferguson. He is the first Liverpool manager to be given the honour with Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, the only English manager to win the European Cup three times, both overlooked.

In a playing career spanning 22 years the Glasgow-born footballer scored 167 goals in 322 appearances for Celtic and 172 goals in 515 games for Liverpool, where he is widely regarded as the club’s finest player. He won nine league championships at Anfield – three as manager – three European Cups and three FA Cups. He is also Scotland’s most capped international with 102 appearances, joint-leading scorer with 30 goals and led Blackburn Rovers to the Premier League title in 1995. But Dalglish’s impact transcends the football pitch, as the citation for the knighthood recognises.

“He was Liverpool manager at the time of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989,” it reads. “He selflessly made himself available to the families of the bereaved, attending most of the funerals, organising hospital visits and attending annual memorial services held at Anfield. He has been a steadfast supporter of the families in their quest for and throughout the Hillsborough Inquiry, and was granted Freedom of the City of Liverpool in recognition of his work. He is the co-founder of The Marina Dalglish Appeal, his family’s cancer charity which opened the £1.5m Centre for Oncology at University Hospital, Aintree in 2007 and which has raised over £10m in total.”

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Dalglish and his wife Marina, now Lady Dalglish, once attended in one day the funerals of four Liverpool fans who were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough. The impact of the disaster on the then 38-year-old led to his resignation as Liverpool manager in 1991. The former Liverpool Walton MP Steve Rotheram, now metro mayor for the city region, tabled a Commons motion in 2011 for Dalglish to be given a knighthood. The motion was signed by 13 MPs.

Dalglish, who claims he will be uncomfortable with “Sir Kenny”, said: “We are hugely proud to have got this. You start off in life just hoping to be a footballer. You become a footballer and have a bit of success in the football world and that seems to give you a platform to go on to other things. We only set out to do the best we possibly could, even through all the other stuff. The charity or Hillsborough; it was to help people because somebody helped us. Marina wanted to show her appreciation – or we did as a family – for the way she was looked after when she was treated [for breast cancer] and ended up starting the charity. I think it’s just what you are supposed to do in life, isn’t it?

“You start off with your parents and they put you on the right road. Marina and I are fortunate that we got good direction from them. Then the football. You couldn’t get any better tutors than [former Celtic manager] Jock Stein and Bob Paisley. People might say they didn’t get a recognition like this. I wouldn’t get into a discussion about that but I’m not saying I’m any more deserving than those two great men.”

• This article was amended on 12 June 2018. Kenny Dalglish is not the first Liverpool player to receive a knighthood, as an earlier version said.